killing your darlings

For a few months, I’ve been working simultaneously on different projects. This has always been an effective way for me to keep the ideas and words flowing, therefore avoiding the dreaded writer’s block. My method has a drawback that I’ve only experienced twice before, but it happened recently.

Whilst on a caravanning holiday in the Scottish Highlands, I reread MacLennan from the beginning, and found that although I’d produced lots of words, the story I’d created wouldn’t have captured and held the attention of a reader. I removed and saved approximately 20,000 words to a folder designated for that purpose, and then I began reworking the remainder.

Over a period of ten days, during early morning sessions and occasional hours spent sitting in the awning, I applied myself to injecting more intrigue, suspense, and action, and the words flowed once again. Like many of you other scribes out there, I know when the story feels ‘right’, and I’m pleased to say that in its new format, MacLennan is in that category.

Yes, we must all have self-belief, but we must all be brutally honest with ourselves. We must utilise beta readers, editors, and anyone else recommended for guidance and the polishing of a tale. It remains, however, our responsibility as authors to produce our best efforts at each stage.

It’s vitally important to admit when you’re wrong.

I now have 50,000 words, and I’m comfortable with the new characters, those being reintroduced, and the pace, which is crucial in such a story. The action works, and so do the occasional breathing spaces, so I feel I have another viable thriller in the making. It may or may not be ready for publication by the end of the year, but I’m in no rush.

I’ll give plenty of notice in the IASD group on Facebook with an approximate date for when I’d appreciate beta readers.

If you’d like a flavour of the story, here is a link to Chapter 1, The Invisible Man.

As always, comments are welcome. Thank you for visiting.

Constance may mean ‘steadfast’, but for me, she’s meant an abundance of work.

In the summer of 2021, I came up with the idea of Crusader (DS Jason Knight), and from the outset, the story flowed well. I introduced Constance (DC Constance Armitage), as his sidekick early on, and the partnership worked, so I was delighted. My joy was premature, because within a few months I realised that the partner was taking centre stage more than I’d intended.

As I wrote in my blog post, Killing Your Darlings, I was compelled to make a few changes to the story. Rather than waste what was effectively a story within a story, I removed three complete chapters and several other passages from the manuscript. I titled the file Constance, and put it aside.

After a year of hard work, including the usual literary surgery following beta reports, I published Crusader in March 2023.

I worked on other projects for a couple of weeks, just as I’d done between major edits. When I finally began to devote my time to Constance, I already had three chapters and the framework of two more. With a sense of relief, I charged on and the tale unfolded, but like Crusader, I felt there was something wrong. I was rewriting the same tale, but with Constance’s point of view.

I deleted whole chapters and created a framework to guide me before I started the rewrite. It was the single most important decision I’d made, apart from the one to perform the rewrite. Once again, the words flowed, but this time, I went off on a tangent with the first part of the story. It was August 2023 when I finally got my act together.

Constance is now ‘resting’ before I print the story and perform a major red pen edit. At present, the tale stands at 97, 000 words which I’d be happy to keep if all goes well with my revisions. For those interested in beta reading the manuscript for me, I aim to have it ready for mid-March.

I produced the original simple cover with the red background so that I had something to work on, and in the past couple of days I amended it to reflect the main part of the story. To get rapid, and trusted feedback, I posted my latest idea on the Indie Author Support and Discussion (IASD) group, on Facebook. It didn’t take long to find out that my efforts were off track.

I returned to the source I use for graphics and found a suitable model I’d never seen on there before. Not only did she look more like my idea of Constance, she had a weapon similar to one of those used by my character. I posted on Facebook with the IASD group again, and to my delight, friend and fellow author, Sharon Brownlie of Aspire Book Covers came to my rescue with a couple of tweaks. After reapplying the title and author name, I was satisfied with the cover.

Now, I’ll continue with other projects until my next full manuscript edit.

As always, comments are welcome, and thank you for reading.